


Absolution

by jellybeany



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Grimmauld Place, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 07:19:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13829238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellybeany/pseuds/jellybeany
Summary: For once, Draco Malfoy doesn’t plan, he doesn’t scheme, he doesn’t think at all. He screams, spins on the spot, and vanishes into thin air.





	1. The Boggart

** Chapter 1   
The Boggart **

Vanishing Cabinets, contrary to their name, do not vanish people. 

Those who step into a Vanishing Cabinet do not disappear - they simply reappear in another cabinet, somewhere else. What Draco Malfoy wishes for is a real vanishing cabinet. He would like to vanish, or be vanished. To be permanently obliterated. He knows Avada could not provide such an escape; there is a chance he might come back as a ghost, or continue on into the afterlife with all his memories and shame. 

There is no escape, he thinks, as he walks the halls of the Manor, a week after the Battle of Hogwarts. There’s a spot on the dining room floor that stubbornly remains a glittering purple, ever since Draco had an accident with his first potions kit when he was six years old. Ten years later, he watched Charity Burbage’s blood spill all over it. 

He catches sight of himself in the grand ornate mirror above the dining table, and doesn’t recognise himself. He looks just the same as he has done this past year: thin, sickly, pale. He scratches absently at the Mark on his arm, and when he looks back up at the mirror, his reflection is crying. He tastes salt on his lips, but he doesn’t quite know what he is crying about. His family is safe now, safer than they were before. _He_ is not coming back.

Things will never be the same. Draco pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes until he sees stars. He hears a strangled sob that must have come from his own mouth. He needs to get _out._ For once, Draco Malfoy doesn’t plan, he doesn’t scheme, he doesn’t think at all. He screams, spins on the spot, and vanishes into thin air.

 

* * *

 

Draco Apparates among a pile of cardboard boxes, tripping and stumbling backwards with a crash. This action unsettles a thick layer of dust, making the room temporarily invisible as if in fog. He doesn’t realise where he is at first. All the furniture has been covered with large sheets that Draco presumes were once white. It’s not until he sees the tapestry that he knows he is at Number 12, Grimmauld Place. 

He has only been here a handful of times. Short visits, playing alone while the adults drank tea. The last time he came, he was accompanying Mother while she came to fetch a hat or a brooch or something equally trivial, from the attic. He had waited in the drawing room, the room with the family tapestry. It had been a bright, stunning thing of green and gold, proudly spanning the entire wall. Draco had run his fingers along the charred edges where the faces of his cousins no longer were. Father used to joke, mirthlessly, that they were Draco’s ‘cousins once removed’. 

The tapestry is still there, but now it is faded and threadbare. It curls off the wall at the corners, and the dust is so thick Draco cannot read any of the names. It is spoilt - just like everything else in this stupid war. 

Draco rolls off the boxes and runs his hands through his hair. The wards had let him in without any resistance. Of course they would, because Mother was a Black. He realises with a jolt that his mother does not know where he has gone, and he feels a stab of guilt for leaving. They could hardly report him missing; any Death Eater found by Aurors would surely be detained. He sits, crumpled, on the floor as tears roll silently down his cheeks. 

Suddenly, a door slams above him, and he hears heavy footsteps come quickly down the creaky staircase. Draco realises with a shuddering breath that he is wandless and unarmed. Disarmed, ever since the day the Snatchers came to the Manor. The only Black he knows is still alive is his aunt (or was it great-aunt?) Andromeda. She can’t be living here, it’s common knowledge she ran off to live with a Muggle. This drawing room looks like nobody has been in it in years. 

Draco sees the doorknob turn, but he isn’t quick enough to move. There is a wand pointed in his face before he can register who its owner is. And then he hears a shout.

“ _Riddikulus!”_

* * *

 

Nothing happens. 

Harry pinches the bridge of his nose, dislodging his glasses. He searches his mind fruitlessly for a happy memory, before realising he doesn’t need one. Casting a Patronus was only effective when his Boggart assumed the shape of a Dementor. He still sees Dementors in his dreams sometimes, usually in the ones with Sirius, and they still terrify him. But they aren’t what he fears most. 

Harry tries not to think about it, but he knows in his heart that he has killed a man. He and his friends searched the country for parts of His splintered soul, so they could destroy them. Voldemort haunted Harry’s life for seventeen years, but he’s dead. What haunts Harry now, is the time he _almost_ killed someone. 

It was an accident, he didn’t know what that spell did, and that makes it worse somehow. He saw Malfoy crying, and tried to fight. He could have disarmed him. He disarmed Voldemort. He disarmed a megalomaniacal mass murderer, and cut Draco Malfoy’s chest open. 

Harry takes a deep breath, looks straight into the Boggarts face, red eyed and tear stained, and repeats:

“Riddikulus!”

The Boggart looks stunned, but it doesn’t fizzle away like Harry expects it to. Instead it pushes Harry’s outstretched arm out of the way and lets out a choked, wet laugh. 

“ _Potter?_ ” it mouths. Harry frowns. He’s too tired to be arguing with magical creatures. Ever since he came to Number 12 after the Battle, he has done nothing but sleep. He knows the war is not over yet. The Ministry is in an administrative frenzy, organising trials and hearings that he will be expected to attend. Trials for all the Death Eaters who haven’t fled the country yet. Harry wonders where the real Draco Malfoy is. It’s strange that a Boggart should still be here, he was under the impression that Molly had got rid of them all while preparing the house for the Order. 

Not-Draco sneezes and scrambles up. They are almost eye to eye; the Boggart is a little taller. 

“What are you doing?” it asks. 

“What-“ Harry begins to ask, and reaches out. His hand rests upon a warm, firm shoulder. This was getting stranger and stranger. Boggarts assume the shape of peoples fears, they shouldn’t have a corporeal form as such. The grey eyes boring into him seem very real. He feels a curious urge to reach up and wipe a tear away from the corner of one of those eyes, but he stops himself. 

“I,” he says, and realises with a sickening lurch of his stomach that it has happened again. This _isn’t_ a Boggart, but his fear has come true. He saw Malfoy, crying and alone, and tried to fight him. He has replayed the memory of that day in the bathroom countless times, hoping he could rewrite it somehow in his mind. If only he had… but Malfoy would never let him. This was another chance, and he’s blown it. A dull pain throbs in his temples, and he clutches his wand tightly before loosening his grip. 

“I’m going to bed.” He’ll figure out what Malfoy is doing in his house later. He can’t be after Harry, if anything he seemed surprised to see him there. 

He turns around and makes for the stairs, and Draco follows him all the way to the door of Sirius’s bedroom. Harry doesn’t shut the door behind him, but Draco doesn’t come in. 


	2. Chapter 2

** Chapter 2 **

** Toast **

 

He falls asleep before his head hits the pillow, and when he finally wakes up it’s no small shock to see a pale-blond Draco Malfoy lying next to him. He’s so still, he could be dead. Harry watches for a while, until he can be sure that Malfoy is still breathing. He is, softly. He’s just asleep. He’s also not wearing any shoes, Harry notices. He probably took them off before getting into bed, something Harry often forgets to do. Living in a tent for months has warped his routine irreparably. Now he sleeps and eats, eats and sleeps. 

He’s still thinking about Malfoy when he’s waiting for the bread to toast. He hasn’t bought a toaster, and he’s not sure Muggle appliances would work in a wizarding house anyway. He toasts white slices in a frying pan, fetching butter and knives. 

His thoughts are a cloud of lead, until they burst. He remembers the last time he saw Malfoy, and the memory assaults him in a wave of acrid smoke. He would rather walk in to the Forbidden Forest to die again, rather than face that Fiendfyre. And then, he does smell burning, but it’s just the toast. 

Malfoy is awake when he brings the plates up to Sirius’s bedroom. He’s sitting on the bed with his back against the wall, slender fingertips twisted in his jumper. His fringe falls into his eyes, until he shakes it away to look at Harry. 

“Are these yours?” Draco asks quietly. 

For a moment, Harry doesn’t know what he’s talking about, until he turns and sees where Draco is pointing. He’s so used to Grimmauld Place he hardly notices the busty, leggy Muggle women in the posters that Sirius permanently stuck to the wall as a teenager. A smile tugs the corners of his lips, but smiling still feels unnatural and his face falls.

“Sirius,” he says, putting two plates of buttered toast on the bed between them. 

“Oh,” says Draco. “I always heard he was…”

Harry takes a noisy bite of toast and waits for Draco to finish. 

“You know, with Lupin.” 

“Was what?” he asks, spraying crumbs and not caring.

“Gay.”

Draco looks a little sheepish, but it doesn’t seem to be a joke. He flicks his eyes downwards to the toast, cocking his head to the side when he notices there are two plates.

“No, he— He only put those posters up to piss off his Mum, but— What? No.”

He would know if Sirius had been… like that, wouldn’t he? Someone would have told him. Sirius would have told him. Not that he ever managed to spend much time with Sirius, not enough as he so desperately wanted. Sirius and Remus were always busy with the Order. Always together, arguing. It couldn’t be possible, but the snapshots Harry remembers feel somewhat like puzzle pieces he hasn’t had the time to put together. Sirius sitting on Remus’s lap on an armchair. Because there hadn’t been enough space. Sirius and Remus had shared a bedroom at Grimmauld Place, he knew that. And at the Burrow. No, but what about Tonks?

“I didn’t think you cared about that sort of thing, Potter.” Draco doesn’t speak loudly, but the icy tone to his voice is unmissable. 

“I don’t.” Harry replies quickly. “Some of my best friends are gay.”

This earns him raised eyebrows. For a millisecond, he thinks he sees Draco’s eyes flash with anger. 

Harry wasn’t lying - some of his best friends _are_ gay. When he’d made it back into the Room of Requirement through the passageway in the Hog’s Head, he and the rest of Dumbledore’s Army had seen Dean and Seamus entwined in one of the most passionate kisses the wizarding world had ever seen. It was quite moving, but Harry supposed it was normal to feel that way when seeing two friends get together. For a split second, he’d felt jealous. Or was it envious, he could never tell the difference. He’d searched the crowd for Ginny, and found her, hand in hand with Neville, cheering louder than the rest. He had to leave them all, to go into the forest. After seeing that kiss, it felt more like they were leaving him behind.

“Shut up, Potter.”

He ignores that, half-heartedly brushes crumbs off on to his jeans, and lies back down next to Malfoy.

“Eat,” he says, and closes his eyes. As he drifts off it occurs to him, in a far off thought, that he still doesn’t know what the hell Malfoy is doing here. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, it's so short. Thank you for reading.


	3. The Letter

When Draco goes downstairs after waking up at something o’ clock in the afternoon, he finds his hawthorn wand lying innocently on the table. 

 

“Do you have shoes?” Harry asks from the drawing room doorway, holding a bell jar with a decapitated house elf inside it. Draco shakes his head.

 

“This is my wand,” he says.

 

“I know. Do you want me to get Kreacher to buy you some?”

 

“Who? Buy what?” he asks. “This is my wand.”

 

Harry sighs and stomps into the hall. He returns without the bell jar.

 

“I know that’s your wand, I’m giving it back. I would have done earlier, but I forgot. And Kreacher is the house elf. He can buy you shoes, since you’ve been walking around barefoot for days.”

 

Draco stares. 

 

“Creature is an odd name for an elf,” he says, trying to buy time. He can’t parse out why Harry would give back his wand without hesitation or why he would offer to get him shoes. He has been at Grimmauld Place for about a week now, but his head doesn’t feel any less painfully foggy. “All our house elves had silly names, like Nettle and Dobby.”

 

Harry’s expression turns stony, and seconds later he stalks back into the drawing room and slams the door after him. 

 

On Wednesday, a pair of brown Oxford brogues appear on the table.

 

* * *

 

Another week later, he gets a letter addressed to _Mr D. Malfoy, Number 12 Grimmauld Place, Islington_ in emerald green ink _._ It bears the Hogwarts seal and Draco opens it with shaking hands. 

 

There are three pieces of parchment. The first is a booklist, but he doesn’t recognise any of the titles or authors. Dickens, Woolf, Dahl. He unfolds the second parchment. It’s signed by Deputy Headmaster Filius Flitwick, inviting him to retake his N.E.W.T. year. The third is from McGonagall, but Draco’s hands are shaking too much for him to read it.

 

He breathes deeply, hoping that will be enough for the anxious weight on his chest to lighten, but it has no effect. Impatient, he jumps out of the bed he and Harry both share.

 

Ever since he slept there the first night, he hasn’t sought out another bedroom. There must be other bedrooms in this place — though whether they are inhabitable, Draco doesn’t know. Sleeping next to Potter has become the new normal. He often wakes, panting, from a nightmare, and finds Potter’s arm slung heavily over his chest. 

 

He doesn’t find Harry in the drawing room or the other bedrooms, so he must be in the kitchen.

 

The problem is, so is Hermione Granger.

 

She jumps in her chair and spills her tea.

 

“What are you doing here?” she says quickly.

 

“He’s helping me clean,” says Potter unconvincingly, licking the custard cream off a custard cream. 

 

Granger looks incredulously at the moth-eaten kitchen curtains, the thick layer of dust on the shelves, and back to Draco. 

 

“Does the Ministry know you’re here?” 

 

Draco doesn’t want to think about the Ministry, so he sidesteps the question.

 

“School does. I got this.” He waves the letter. Harry takes it, and Granger reads over his shoulder. 

 

“Re-take seventh year? Why are you re-taking seventh year? You already took it!” she says shrilly. 

 

“Because—”

 

“So, so, we spend our seventh year on the run from Death Eaters and now we’re coming back to Hogwarts and we have to spend the year with _you?!”_ Her eyes are wild and she’s breathing fast. 

 

“Not just me!” Draco says desperately. “Everyone! Everyone who wants to come back.”

 

Granger visibly deflates, and sinks back into her chair. 

 

“Harry, I think I left a bracelet upstairs last time I was here. Can you go and get it, please?” 

 

Even Draco knows that Granger doesn’t wear bracelets, and he tries to communicate this to Harry through a series of complicated eyebrow movements. But the daft bugger simply mumbles _sure_ and wanders off upstairs.

 

Granger has her wand pointed at his chest within seconds. He didn’t hear an incantation, but he still feels as if he’s been put in a body bind.

 

“Tell me why you’re here.” Her voice doesn’t waver. This is a witch who was tortured by his aunt Bellatrix and came out alive.

 

Draco decides to go with the truth.

 

“I couldn’t be at home.” 

 

She blinks at him.

 

“You— But why are you _here?_ In Harry’s house?”

 

“I didn’t know it was his house,” he says. 

 

“Well, it is.” Her wand is still pointed at him. 

 

“He let me stay.”

 

“ _Why?”_

 

There’s a question neither of them know the answer to. There’s a bump from upstairs, and Granger’s eyes flick to the ceiling.

 

“I’d better go and stop him before he touches a cursed heirloom,” she mutters.

 

“I’m sorry.” 

 

He didn’t mean for it to come out like that, quick and insincere. Granger pauses on her way to the stairs, fixing him with a hard unreadable look. 

 

“For everything,” he adds.

 

“You should be,” she says.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, it's been a long time. Sorry. And it's not very cheery, is it? I have about six different drafts for more lighthearted stories, but I wrote this instead. I personally prefer the lighthearted eighth year stories, but my anxiety prefers ones where characters fall apart.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what I'm doing or where it's going, but it's fun to write.


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